Killing Games
by cautiontothewind
Summary: He escaped to a foreign country, his past erased - this time by his own accord. She traveled to meet with him, her past still all too real.
1. Chapter 1

Alright, first and foremost, thanks so much for checking the story out: I really hope you like it!

**Disclaimer:** Jason Bourne things don't belong to me. Lyndsi Stonem things do.

**Chapter One.**

_Buenos Aires, Argentina_

There was no one watching her, no secret room hidden on the other side of her mirror and she knows it. But Lyndsi Stonem still taps her fingernail on the glass, leaving it to rest just underneath her reflected eye; doesn't keep her from leaning forward so that her nose is almost touching the surface of the mirror and turn to look at where the dirt caked nail met cool glass, expecting there to be a space between the tip of her nail and its reflection. She rolls her lip between her teeth and lets her hand fall limply to instead rest on the counter beside her.

The only sign of how long she has been sitting in her sink, leaning in as close to her mirror as she can go without her eyes crossing, is the amount of cramping that she feels in her legs when she shifts. Lyndsi leans back carefully, far enough to open one of the drawers under the porcelain counter top and dig through it. Her fingers touch cool metal and she starts, almost losing her balance and tumbling backwards. Her fingers instinctively tighten around the object and she wrenches it out of the drawer, sending multiple black make up cases tumbling to the floor. The different colors turn her floor into either clown prostitute or a preschoolers prized project, but she just stares at the almost gun in her hands.

It has always been a strict rule of hers not to keep a gun in the bathroom for fear of mistaking it for her hairdryer and right then she makes the decision not to keep a hairdryer in her bedroom for fear of grabbing it in place of her gun. She shoves the hair dryer clumsily back into the drawer and pulls out the remaining make up cases, unwilling to get out of the sink to pick the ones on the floor back up.

Make up has never been a priority, but now she applies it carefully and as seamlessly as possible. She doesn't need it and doesn't like how it feels to wake up after falling asleep with it on, which she does without fail. But the colors offer her a mask to hide her emotions behind. The cover up hides any sign of weakness, be it the dark circles beneath her just as dark eyes that are the only things she ever has to show for a night of fitful sleep filled with nightmares of gunshots and news reports or bruises on her shoulders from clumsy sprints through crowded streets, following the ghosts of a past that wasn't hers. The color Lyndsi blends into the tan skin around her eyes and along her cheekbones helps her to blend in, makes her feel as if she's blending all of the different parts of her life together in a way she'll never actually manage.

Her lips are cracked and there is a cut near the edge that gives her a sting of pain whenever she runs her tongue over it. She does it once, just because, and delights in the shiver that runs down her back.

Lyndsi slips from the sink and steps over the mess on the floor, thinking of the plush white carpet she had in her room after deciding that she didn't like the creaking of the hardwood floors that had been installed when she'd first stumbled upon the house. She's almost to the frame of her door when the thrown open window at the end of the week distracts her and she walks towards it. A light breeze blows the sheer white blinds around like ghosts, softly whisking on the walls. They're cool and despite the warm sunlight filtering through the glass, they send shivers down her arms as they hit her when she comes into reach of them to lean her elbows on the sill and look out. The Obelisk is clearly visible, shooting into the bright blue sky high over rooftops as a beacon, a landmark, Buenos Aires's own Eiffel Tower. He is out there somewhere. She just has to find him, talk to him. Make him understand.

Something is buzzing when she walks into her room and she eyes her bookshelves, mentally marking the books that she doesn't care about and probably won't ever read again, the ones that she was willing to use to kill a bug with. There's a movement in the corner of her eye and in the time it takes her to react to what exactly was going on, she almost lets her phone vibrate off of the table she had placed in the middle of the room to change a light bulb a couple of days ago and had yet to bother moving it back under her windows, where it belongs. Lyndsi almost falls over the table when she grabs for the phone, pinning it just before it reaches the edge. She waits for a ring or two, taking deep breaths to appear calm but a glance at the caller ID tells her it was unnecessary. Lyndsi wasn't the one that had to appear in control for calls like this and she stalks back across the room as she chooses to accept the call but doesn't immediately answer it. She waits until she finds one of her long white shirts before lifting the phone to her ear.

"Hello?" Her voice is high pitched and almost constantly teasing in a way that she knows is a sharp contrast to her sadistic and cruel personality.

Confirming her suspicions, the man on the other side of the line is by far more exciting than she is. "We've found him," The thick Argentinean accent makes the words almost impossible to understand, and even though she does, Lyndsi doesn't react. She is unwilling to believe that it's true and go straight for the chase with the same excitement as before, instead reigning in her emotions in for the moment until she was sure.

With or without make-up on, Lyndsi Stonem had always thrived on repressed emotions and she is unwilling to believe that after three months, a length that is either far too long or far too short depending on how one looks at it, her search is over. She pulls the shirt over her head while making a noncommittal sound into the phone and continues digging through the dresser for a pair of black leggings.

"He was spotted on the east wharf at the Rio de la Plata," the voice continues, something a lot like excitement trailing off so that it almost turns into a question at the end. Lyndsi bites down on the edge of her smile as she does nothing to assure him that it was probably true or to tell him that it wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't him, they would just have to sit tight until he surfaces. He has to, sooner or later, even if it takes her on a tour of Argentina, maybe even the world.

When she reaches out to grab her black vest from where it is hanging on one of her crystal drape holders she notices the way her hands are shaking and she freezes.

Light after light hit her square in the face, all the same dulled and unremarkable yellow. In the distance, there are more lights than there are cars and the new lights flash white-blue-red, white-blue-red. She can't hear the sirens yet, but they're close enough and she swears. She tightens her hands around the steering wheel, digging her nails into the soft leather, to still their shaking. She prays that traffic doesn't slow and changes lanes as soon as possible, glancing over towards the simple steel railing that was the only thing between her and the worst idea she has ever had.

It was not the perfect exit strategy, not well thought out by any means, but she was never the greatest at thinking on her feet. And how was she supposed to know that Pamela Landy was going to go whistle blower, anyway? She knows that they're still looking for her back in the States– there is no such thing as a suicide, not when the victim was to undergo investigation for her participation in a major government agency and _especially _when her body was never found.

Her stomach heaves at the thought and she feels like she's not getting enough air, like she's drowning and can't get her seatbelt undone and she's remembering all of the warnings about water pressure and it's not helping, but Lyndsi isn't willing to gasp for the breath she needs while on the phone. She closes her eyes and remembers that she's on solid ground. She keeps breathing regularly until she gets to ten and then opens her eyes. She's standing at the right angle to see a slight reflection of herself in her windows and Lyndsi smiles, all confidence, back towards herself and quickly finishes buttoning the black vest.

"You'd better be fucking sure this time," she warns conversationally, shifting the phone to her other ear as she begins walking down the hallway, slipping her feet into her black flats as she walks.

She straightens back up and bounds down the stairs as she continues, sickeningly sweet, "Because if you send me on another phantom chase, you'll be dead before you know that you were wrong." She waits patiently for an answer and gets it in the form of a hitched breath and the click of the receiver as if they were scared she would say something more. It makes her smile as she pushes out into the bright sunlight and sets off through the finely architected streets.

* * *

The cab moves along at a steady pace, surprisingly efficient over the notoriously uneven and crowded Argentinean streets. The sun is hanging high in the sky outside the clouded window, the light filtering in as if it were first having to pass through some sort of baking sheet. Lyndsi hasn't taken a cab in a long while, preferring the _subte_ or walking to cars. The streets were normally crowded, traffic backed up for sometimes blocks, not to mention the fact that many of the streets were pedestrian only, the cabs themselves were normally dirty and she has never been able to do very well when it was only herself that she had for company.

She would normally have made the short walk to the east wharf, but today is different. She can't be bothered with the time it would take. Jason has eluded the world's most elite agencies for several years and Lyndsi wasn't about to just let him disappear while she has the chance to meet with him. Any extra time she could peel off between

Lyndsi presses her spine back against the leather seats, using the back of one hand to push a strand of shining brown hair from in front of her face and leans her forehead against the window. She watches the buildings and the people and the statues and the lampposts breeze by, seeing but not really comprehending what any of it is or what it means. Every once in a while she flicks her eye to the driver's rearview mirror, normally choosing to ignore the only other person in the car at all costs, and can see the Obelisk behind them, still there, still sturdy, still pointing straight into the air. It was a constant in Lyndsi's life, and if anyone had ever told her, seven months ago, that a stone monument would be a focal point in her life she would have laughed at them.

Now she isn't so sure.

Before her, if she tilts her head in just the right direction and the buildings end at just the right times, she can see the waters of the estuary, the bright sunlight reflecting off of it in shimmering diamonds. She waits until she can see it more consistently, waits until the salt stings at her nose through the window opened to allow the smoke from her cigarette to flow out the window and she can taste it on her tongue to stop the cab. She pays him and exits.

The sun is high in the sky, signaling the time as being just past three in the afternoon. A light breeze plays with the leaves of the trees lining the path heading for the coastline and keeps the heat at bay. She pauses to get her feet under her, to imagine herself from the air and remind herself how to get to where she needs to be under the pretense of pushing long strands of her brown hair behind her ears. All around her is a plethora of voices and languages and _life_ and Lyndsi is content to walk along unnoticed amidst it all.

Even after months in Buenos Aires, Lyndsi knows how to play the part of a tourist and she does it well. She knows what places she should stop to admire, when she should start to dig in her purse for her camera and when she should stop and worry and look at her map. She knows what sort of places she should frequent, even if the food was grossly overpriced and she even knew how to chop up her normally flawless Spanish when she 'mistakes' tourists for locals, even though the real tourists stand out as clear as a sore thumb on a clown hand. Then she laughs nervously, brushes it off, and continues down the streets.

Sometimes she's a North American tourist with a different name and a different story for everybody she comes in contact with. Sometimes she pretends that she's just another student in Argentina for university, sometimes as a marine biologist, sometimes as a cultural analyst.

She can fool anyone; can make anyone believe just about everything and anything she says. It's always been enough for the people around her, but it has never been and probably never will be enough for her. It's always enough to throw off her step just _that _much or make her analyze those around her a bit too closely, a little too critically, sometimes.

Lyndsi knows and can say, without a shadow of doubt or a feeling of self pity or feeling that she was putting the blame on some one else, that her critiquing nature came from her profession.

Sometimes she had hated the CIA. Everything about it; working there, the people, what it stood for and what they did there. Sometimes she had considered quitting, walking away from everything she had done. She hated the way, even though she had only ever been a psychological analyst, that there had always been an endless sea of mail going both in and out of her little steel mailbox just inside the building, all of the envelopes filled with anything but good news and not one of them read by anyone but Lyndsi. She always wonders what it would have been like to have a job that you could walk down the hallways of your building without a gun or without an armed guard, not having to worry about the glass one-way mirrors breaking when one of the assets that they were creating broke into just as many pieces as the mirrors.

Unfortunately for her, they never broke that simply, that cleanly. It was always a messy event, watching a person fall to pieces in front of you without really falling apart. They were created to be weapons and stayed like that no matter what she did to try and figure out what was going on inside their heads. She witnessed their breaking first hand, probably more personally than anyone else. It was obvious when someone who had always been, at the very least, cordial to you suddenly stopped talking and would hardly even look at you.

She hates that she had never really felt like a psychologist. She hates the way that the office she had always dreamed of was nicely decorated and that her dream office and her dream job, which was located in a room more like a hospital room or a jail cell didn't match up.

She hates that her dream job wasn't actually her dream job and she never did anything to change it.

Lyndsi still wonders what it would have been like to have an office with a bookshelf, a desk, a couch, four clients a day that would _talk _to her rather than just _stare_, a mousy receptionist that would both respect her and be someone that Lyndsi could unload her own problems to after a long day of listening to other people's without break. She may have even had a social life that she could go home to or go out with after her long day at work was finished. She might have even gotten herself a clip board and a pair of glasses that she didn't need to further fit the image because she wouldn't have had to have worried about one of the assets or her patients getting a hold of either one of them and using it as a weapon.

Lyndsi hated the CIA and she still does, but she also knows that it has made her who she is. And for that, she will never love any thing more.

When she reaches it, Lyndsi steps onto the wharf confidently, starts walking towards the very end as if she were meeting someone there. She's scanning the crowd but not too obviously, eyeing each person carefully.

She has never seen him in person before, only in the pictures put in his files and passports and even those, she knows now, were outdated. She doesn't count the shadow on a video feed from some bank that someone was convinced was him as seeing him because she had only seen a flash of the tape, the low quality, black and white tape, before she had been shoved out of the control room by one of the other agents. She had never been trusted enough to be one of the people brought in to try and bring Bourne in, she had never worked at Blackbriar long enough to get that sort of seniority.

But when she sees Jason Bourne she's knows it's him and she starts with his back because it's the first thing that she sees.

He stands quietly to one side of the wharf and she watches him from further down under the pretence of taking a picture of something just above the surface of the water underneath where his hands dangle over the railing. He slumps over, most of his weight put on his elbows and those on the wooden wharf railing. She waits for the wood to give out, waits for a charred hole to form from the sheer intensity that he's staring at it with.

Jason Bourne is the biggest mistake that the Central Intelligence Agency has ever allowed itself to make and it's – he's – somewhere between awe-inspiring and terrifying. Lyndsi clenches her hands into fists at her sides.

"Jason Bourne…" she purrs, her voice low in her throat. Jason turns and stares at her and she grins slowly. "I've waited a long time to meet you." She has a sudden thought and unclenches her palms and runs them down the sides of her legs. "Unless you're going by David now," She pouts the slightest bit and leans forward, as if to tell the assassin a secret. "He's not quite as much fun as Jason."


	2. Chapter 2

There are one hundred and seventeen names on the list. Some are scribbled out, others marked with a less severe simple line through it. Some have question marks next to them and still others are circled. Some aren't marked at all, eerily untouched amidst all of the pen marks.

Jacob tilts his head, weariness, disbelief, confusion and immediate judgment of the news that had broken and the wreckage of an organization he was left to sort through clouding his thoughts. He turns the paper over, half wondering if he should have crossed his fingers first, to check for more names and doesn't find any. He considers it a victory, albeit a small one, but a victory nevertheless. The CIA needs every turn of luck they could get and everywhere, not just within the government, was luck evaporating like water.

Machek rereads the names on the list that are still halfway intact while he reaches for the cup of now-cold coffee sitting to his left. He fights the urge to sigh or show any sign of the tiredness he felt and instead just leans back in the desk chair and clasps his hands on his desk. He doesn't notice until it's too late, though, the weight of his voice when he asks, "How do you see this ending?"

"It's already over," Noah Vosen declares from his spot across the desk. His hands are clenched around the arms of the uncomfortable looking chair, and Machek takes little pride in the other man's discomfort. Usually, he was happy to see someone's own plan coming back around to rear its ugly head and mess up their lives in some way. It was a way of letting the punishment fit the crime while remaining wholly constitutional. But something about this particular situation, despite the numerous times that something Vosen has done has caused Machek to lose sleep, doesn't sit well and he has the sneaking suspicion that Vosen, too, was losing sleep over the sudden exposure and Machek doesn't feel that it's completely about the huge lawsuit Vosen knows is heading his way.

Machek turns the paper to face Vosen and pushes it towards the edge of the desk. There's a beat and Machek wonders if Vosen is going to take the paper at all. Eventually, the man half rises from his seat andleansforward to take the paper and Machek waits, giving him a few seconds to look at the paper before saying, "Not all of these names are crossed off. Not everyone is dead or in our custody."

"Out of sight, out of mind,"

"I'm guessing informed decisions like that are what Blackbriar was built on?" Machek's patience is running dangerously low and he doesn't find it unwarranted. It's been a long couple of months for the CIA and Machek wants nothing more than to close the entire investigation. Let some ambitious law student, twelve years from now, reopen it and try to sort everything out then. But he knows that it's too much to ask for.

"Blackbriar was created to help us protect our citizens, just like everything else we do." Vosen defends the project more than the project had protected anyone. "It didn't stand up to the pressure, true enough, but it had a harder time coming along with some variables that no one had prepared to deal with."

Machek stands and turns around to look out of the windows that run along the back wall of his office. He speaks to the slight reflection of Vosen that was projected on the glass with the help of the early dusk sun, "But that's your job, isn't it? To make sure that absolutely nothing can go wrong in an operation, to make sure that everything runs smoothly and that things like this-" He whirls around, hands spread palms up to indicate Pamela Landy's office. The room hadn't played a huge role in the incident as a whole, but Pamela Landy had. Her willingness to help Jason Bourne, to partner up with him and complete her part of their plan, sending the documents to higher offices than herself, had landed her in a government facility just inside the city limits of Washington D.C. She has been undergoing investigation after willingly going with the police that had been sent to bring her in. "- don't happen, right?"

Vosen's voice is tight with anger and his mind is obviously clouded with the same emotion when he says, "And isn't your job to find people? None of the names on this list -"

He throws the list in Machek's direction and it floats harmlessly to rest on the desk that separates them. Vosen's words, _names on this list_, send a shiver down Machek's spine that he easily buries the want to react to. He realizes now that Vosen's ability to refer to living people as names on a list is what enabled him to create a program like Blackbriar and to be so closely connected to one like Treadstone.

"-are trained in anything more than basic skills that all CIA employees are. If they're still alive, they're easy to find. If they were still alive, then you would have found them already."

Machek smiles, amused with the sudden turn of events. He knows, even as he prepares the big reveal in his head that he is giving away more information than is strictly necessary. But he also knows that once the meeting is over, Vosen is returning to Washington to continue with his own investigation. Machek was making sure the investigators under his supervision were leaving no stone in the history of anyone who had touched this entire ordeal's history remained unturned. "Wills seems to think differently." Vosen stiffens at the name. "And to be honest, with what I know about you, I'm more inclined to believe him. He seemed to have been more connected with those working in Blackbriar than you were." He looks to Vosen for some sort of argument. There isn't one and he allows himself another small victory as he sits back down. "So should we go through the list again?"

* * *

Her thoughts start on Bourne, curious about what's going on in his head. Lyndsi even goes so far as to believe that she's _concerned _about what the asset is thinking and feeling. She wants to know what's going on so that she can _help _him deal with it; help him carry whatever emotional baggage he had, just like with what she had done back in New York with all of the Blackbriar trainees. But the longer she watches him, grinding the toe of her flat into the uneven wooden panels and sliding her hand into her back pocket for her pack of cigarettes, Lyndsi knows that it's for herself and only herself. She needs to know so that she can find Wills and fix this. She needs to know what went so wrong with Jason so that they can remedy the problem and start again. It was one of the selfish acts of life and one of the greater ones of Lyndsi's life.

Her false concerns and feigned interest in his health, thoughts, emotions and motivation disappear as quickly as the smoke that she breathes out after a long drag is whisked away by the breeze. She braces her arms in front of her on the railing and thinks about his file. Jason hadn't wanted justice. Justice was, of course, the honorable way to allude to what it was he had been chasing, but it wasn't _it_. So what had he wanted? To clear his name? Vengeance for Marie? No, one thing she had heard was that tape. Marie wouldn't have wanted revenge, he said it himself. And after all, he hadn't cared that they had killed Marie, not really. All he had cared about was that they hadn't listened to his warnings, that they hadn't taken him seriously when he had told them to leave him alone. Bourne had started thriving off of control; most specifically, places and things and people that _he _could control. He'd been created to control situations and when his fate had suddenly taken a turn without his consent, he'd set out to destroy the cause.

Bourne stares at her and she leans forward on the railing. She tilts her head, hoping to look sincere, as she waits for what he has to say. She's close enough that when she looks out of the corner of her eye, she's able to see the assassin in his clouded blue eyes; the evidence of Treadstone and everything that it did to him hidden behind a mask of moving on and buried under a mantra of _David Webb, David Webb_.

It's probably a repercussion of her life's sudden turn on the whirlwinds of change— the security net of Blackbriar pulled out from under her – that she realizes her complete lack of a plan after actually finding Bourne. Of course, she is counting on revenge, which just goes without saying. But until then, she figures because there's not much else she can do at this point, she'll go along with whatever Bourne has to say. Play it by ear and string the once assassin along until the proper opportunity presents itself.

"You have the wrong person," he informs her, cordial enough not to draw attention from those around them. But she doesn't miss the tightness in his voice that wouldn't have been noticeable if she hadn't been looking for it. Still, Lyndsi feels a pang in the pit of her stomach at the tone and tries not to fidget too much and makes sure that her smile doesn't slip enough to send a blow to her confidence.

She manages to feel proud of herself while at the same time feeling like she's making a huge mistake in finding her first conversation with a Treadstone agent in Bourne. Jason Bourne, who is trained and has proven himself over and over again. Jason _Bourne_, who is ruined and will never be anything but. He doesn't even know her and she doesn't know how he works.

So she finds a middle ground, reminding herself that rational decisions were one thing that she'd never been able to add to her resume and tilts her chin up a little higher. She forces her shoulders a little squarer, smoothes out the cracks in her smile while making it as soft as she can, maybe hoping to put the asset a little more at ease and reminding herself for the umpteenth time why the world needed Blackbriar so much. It would have cleaned up the entire mess that Treadstone had created; would have recreated trust in the CIA and any of its decisions and under-agencies.

Lyndsi further tilts her head so that it's angled more directly towards the sun, even as it's falling quickly on the other side of noon, allowing herself a second or two to enjoy the warmth of the Argentinean sunlight. She closes her eyes and feels her other senses kick into overdrive to compensate for the apparent loss of one. When she finally speaks, the contradictory words are slow and thoughtful. "Person being the operative word there, I suppose,"

Bourne's eyes harden instantly and he glowers at her and she's incredibly grateful that looks can't actually kill because for the first time she really understands what it looks like. Had Lyndsi been someone else, she probably would have stepped back or ducked away. She just drops her cigarette into the estuary; continuing to hold smoke in her mouth until she turned around and bent one leg so that the bottom of her foot was against one of the wooden railings.

"I fell off the map just like everyone wanted. I've seen the reports, people know I exist but I've gone out of my way to keep a low profile. What is it with you people?" She sees his eyes run along the skyline of the buildings that run along the coast.

She listens to him patiently, wonders if it was the most he had ever said at one time because she knows that he doesn't speak much. Tapes, though broken in quality and only caught as she was ushered between meetings back at Blackbriar taught her that Bourne wasn't one to sit down and talk about things. "Disappearing has never made a difference to them," she says it deliberately, because Blackbriar had never sent anyone after Jason. Sure, he has gotten in the way and it had ended with the death of some of her favorite assets, but she'd deal with that later.

"Snipers on the buildings?" There aren't any and he knows it. His voice is low and dangerous; indifference gone from his voice, but it is still startlingly calm. Lyndsi doesn't care, despite all of the warnings in her trainings that had suggested against working with people who had managed to be angry and calm at the same time. Blackbriar had been taught to act with caution around assets that came out of Treadstone. It was almost enough to make Lyndsi want to laugh.

She knows that she's moving too much to be either reassuring, calming or even come off legitimate, but she can't help pulling her leg from the railing she had had it pressed against and slamming it onto the dock, spinning to face Bourne. It comes off more like a stomp than she would have wanted and she meets Bourne's gaze gamely. Lyndsi continues searching Bourne's face for something that she probably won't be able to identify if she finds it as she hisses, "Are you really so conceited that you think everyone is out to get you all the time?"

Jason sneers, tightens his fist on the railing and mutters through gritted teeth back, "It's not like I have any reason to believe otherwise. I'm sure you know my record," There's dry sarcasm in his voice and another shot of annoyance works its way up Lynds's spine.

Her eyes are more narrowed than before as she takes a half step back. Most of the world knew his record, despite the CIA having put forth its best efforts at burying the story. In the same way as Bourne had, every time the story started to die down some sort of new development was uncovered and reported on. She had stopped paying attention to the news long ago, sick of the misinterpreted meanings and intentions behind Blackbriar and the unfair comparisons to Treadstone. They were nothing alike; Treadstone had been a form of torture with the word 'Operation' before it and Blackbriar hadn't been.

"Along with most of the planet," she replies smoothly and she hopes that the words emanated the same tone that his had. "Your file, too. Just me, that is. The Agency has managed to keep _that_ out of the media so far." Despite Pamela Landy's best efforts to send the file to CNN, those that had still been under Vosen's control had managed to get tabs on the folder and retrieved it just before the segment started. Lyndsi hadn't been able to fully appreciate it since she was running around looking for her own file and throwing the appropriate pieces of paper from her desk into the fire that someone had started in a trash can, but it had supposedly been pretty impressive. "Landy lied, you know. Your birthday really isn't in April." She doesn't see the point in letting him know that she was from Blackbriar so soon. Besides, he'd figure it out. "Rumor has it, though, you're remembering those things these days," she adds as an afterthought, a careless shrug tacked on the end.

He shifts his weight like he was going to move and then seems to suddenly change his mind and Lyndsi finds the entire motion odd. She finds it strange that only Jason Bourne could turn an indecisive movement into an entire event that catches her attention like it had. She plays it off to the fact that it's hard for her to imagine him being indecisive or changing his mind at the last minute for anything. His eyes are set on a point in the estuary, his mouth in a terse line.

"I just thought you'd like to know about what's left of your brilliant plan," And she does, because she really isn't sure how much he knows about anything. Four months have gone by and it's only now that she's meeting Bourne, three years after Blackbriar had even gone into the negotiation stages and, in turn, fallen apart. Abruptly even to herself, she turns away from the railing. She isn't giving up; on the contrary, actually, she was already planning the next step in her plan because if there was a plan nothing could go wrong and she couldn't waste any time, because if she wasted time she'd have to hurry later and hurrying only led to holes and loose ends that wrenches could be thrown into.

Jason beats her to it. He turns and unintentionally – or maybe intentionally, because that was Jason Bourne's true gift – cuts her off and leaves her with the words, "Or else you're reminding yourself of your brilliant agency."

He turns again as soon as his words set in and fades into the crowd just as quickly. Lyndsi is secretly relieved because her legs give a violent shudder and she has to brace her hands on the railing to keep from stumbling. She would have been more bothered by the sign of weakness, but the alternative is trying to convince herself that she did it to keep from going after Jason and that's out of the question.

But her resolve doesn't stop her from shoving at the railing violently on her turn around and heading back to her building. Nor does it, once she has reached the building, keep her from slamming her key into the lock and throwing the heavy glass doors open with more force than was completely necessary. Lyndsi hears the voices in the lobby before she sees the people there and veers sharply to the left and up the narrow stairway. She runs up three flights of the steps, tripping regularly, before slamming out another heavy, steel door and out into one of the dimly lit hallways. She looks down as she hurries down the hallway towards the elevators and the deep red carpeting blurs before her eyes.

She blinks furiously until she reaches the safety of her flat on the eighth floor and she throws herself onto her bed fully clothed. Lyndsi wrenches the covers up around her, bites her lips and does her best not to cry.


End file.
